YOUR favorite picture rises up before me, | |
| Whene’er you play that tune; | |
| I see two figures standing in a garden | |
| In the still August noon. | |
| |
| One is a girl’s with pleading face turned upward | 5 |
| Wild with a great alarm, | |
| Trembling with haste, she binds her broidered kerchief | |
| Around the other’s arm. | |
| |
| Whose gaze is bent on her in tender pity, | |
| Whose eyes look into hers | 10 |
| With a deep meaning though she cannot read it, | |
| Hers are so dim with tears. | |
| |
| What are they saying in the sunny garden, | |
| With Summer flowers ablow? | |
| What gives the woman’s voice its passionate pleading; | 15 |
| What makes the man’s so low? | |
| |
| “See, love,” she murmurs, “you shall wear my kerchief, | |
| It is the badge, I know; | |
| And it will bear you safely through the conflict | |
| If—if indeed you go? | 20 |
| |
| “You will not wear it? Will not wear my kerchief? | |
| Nay! Do not tell me why, | |
| I will not listen! If you go without it | |
| You will go hence to die. | |
| |
| “Hush! Do not answer! It is death, I tell you, | 25 |
| Indeed I speak the truth. | |
| You, standing there so full of life and courage, | |
| So bright with health and youth. | |
| |
| “You would go hence, out of the Summer sunshine, | |
| Out of the garden bloom; | 30 |
| Out of the living, thinking, feeling, present | |
| Into the unknown gloom?” | |
| |
| Than he makes answer. “Hush! oh, hush my darling! | |
| Life is so sweet to me, | |
| So full of hope you need not bid me guard it, | 35 |
| If such a thing might be! | |
| |
| “If such a thing might be!—but not through falsehood, | |
| I could not come to you; | |
| I dare not stand here in your pure, sweet presence, | |
| Knowing myself untrue.” | 40 |
| |
| “It is no sin!” the wild voice interrupts him, | |
| “This is no open strife. | |
| Have you not often dreamt a nobler warfare | |
| In which to spend your life? | |
| |
| “Oh! for my sake—though but for my sake—wear it! | 45 |
| Think what my life would be | |
| If you, who gave it first true worth and meaning | |
| Were taken now from me! | |
| |
| “Think of the long, long days, so slowly passing! | |
| Think of the endless years! | 50 |
| I am so young! Must I live out my life-time | |
| With neither hopes nor fears?” | |
| |
| He speaks again, in mournful tones and tender, | |
| But with unswerving faith: | |
| “Should not love make us braver, aye, and stronger | 55 |
| Either for life or death? | |
| |
| “And life is hardest. Oh, my love, my treasure | |
| If I could bear your part | |
| Of this great sorrow, I would go to meet it | |
| With an unshrinking heart. | 60 |
| |
| “Child! child! I little dreamt in that bright Summer | |
| When first your love I sought, | |
| Of all the future store of woe and anguish | |
| Which I, unknowing, wrought. | |
| |
| “But you’ll forgive me? Yes, you will forgive me | 65 |
| I know, when I am dead! | |
| I would have loved you—but words have scant meaning | |
| God loves you more instead.” | |
| |
| Then there is silence in the sunny garden, | |
| Until, with faltering tone, | 70 |
| She sobs, the while still clings close to him, | |
| “Forgive me—go—my own!” | |
| |
| So human love, and faith by death unshaken, | |
| Mingle their glorious psalm, | |
| Albeit low, until the passionate pleading | 75 |
| Is hushed in deepest calm. | |
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